Zichan

Zichan, also known as Gongsun Qiao and better known by his courtesy name Zichan, was a Chinese statesman of the State of Zheng during the late Spring and Autumn period, born around 581 BCE and dying in 522 BCE. He served as chief minister, effectively prime minister, of Zheng from 543 BCE until his death, a term during which he undertook major administrative and legal reforms. His central and lasting achievement in the history of Chinese law came in 536 BCE, when he had Zheng's penal statutes cast in bronze on a tripod vessel known as a ding, publishing the state's criminal law for the first time among the states of the Eastern Zhou period. This act broke with the earlier practice of keeping law as a matter of secret aristocratic discretion, making the specific provisions covering theft, banditry, arrest procedure and other criminal matters accessible in principle to the common people governed by them, and it is regarded by legal historians as marking a foundational moment in the emergence of published, codified law in Chinese history.